The thing that annoys me most about the video, apart from the goofy obliviousness of Officer Rerun, is the handy dubbed-in captioning. You know, where it says something like "Sparky's gonna love the FEMA camps."
Here's why: There aren't going to be any FEMA camps, Zippy. The whole idea of "FEMA camps" gives gives beer-bellied armchair revolutionaries from Cucamonga, California to Camden, New Jersey a nice safe "Go Code" that will never come; a bugle call that will never sound and that they'll only have to answer in their daydreams.
There aren't going to be any camps. Government will get a little more intrusive. Taxes will get a little higher. Laws will get a little more strict. All as we seesaw back and forth between Democrat and Republican administrations, each one tightening their favorite part of the ratchet and never repealing anything. And you'll keep going to work on Monday and tuning in to Alex Jones late at night and waiting for "The Camps" as the signal to start "The Revolution."
And meanwhile, we'll have turned into Sweden with NASCAR and better gun laws; Britain with baseball; a quasi-socialist "Third Way" country with its own American flavor and hot and cold running cable. And half the population wants this; half your neighbors; half your relatives.
And membership at the gun club is down, because who can afford to pay the dues these days, and did you hear how much the insurance is going to be next year? And your M1A will be "pre-ban" again, and nobody will have come to take your guns, and it's a shame about Bob, but he shoulda known better then to try to build that silencer in his basement. Maybe when they transfer him from Club Fed to the FEMA camp, then we'll go spring him...
(H/T to Billy Beck.)
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26 comments:
I seem to remember something about a frog in boiling water.
Good luck convincing your neighbor that what's happening is bad. Seems many in the human race don't mind being a serf as long as it means their neighbor doesn't have more than they do.
Ask a resident of Stockholm or London if they feel particularly serflike. They don't. They're happy.
There are a lot of people here who aren't happy, though. On BOTH ends of the spectrum. And both sides get more vocal and restive every single day.
How high does the thermostat go before the boiler lets off steam?
Oh, people will snap, but there won't be any door-to-door camp roundup to snap at.
Instead, there will be hundreds of isolated loons from the left or from the right, depending on who's in charge at the time. Vilified by the other side and disowned by their own...
Exactly correct Tam, slow tightening of this law here, that law there, unconnected, never repealed.
You know Helmet law for kids on bikes, then when caught violating you are a "bad" parent and under "supervision", and he fact you have guns in the house becomes a another little tick onthe chart, combined with all the interlinked databases pretty soon you feel like gulliver tied down by a thousand pieces of dental floss.
And ghods help you when you violate one of a thousand obscure laws ...oh you'll get off with a warning and small fine, being a good citizen and all. But the process has been the punishment, you'll self censor from now on.
I forget where I saw it (but it was on the internets, and probably a blog, so it has to be true) but apparently the people buying non-PC guns in the recent Obama inspired feeding frenzy weren't all current gun owners picking up an extra, but a majority were new gun owners.
I wonder if gun ownership might not be a gateway drug to a belief in political liberty in general. Owning an evil bullet spewing assault rifle certainly puts you in more intimate contact with the reach of the state than, say, needlepoint or playing Xbox. I wonder if a person who has recently reached the conclusion that the state can't guarantee their safety wouldn't then follow that intellectual path and wonder why he can't buy a high flush toilet, light bulbs that work or buy beer on sunday.
Okay, it's a slim thread of a hope, but I'll bitterly cling to it.
I sure hope so, pdb.
I want to see the national mood turn back from "Help us, Government!" to "You ain't the boss of me."
Snark points awarded, and all that, but...
I would be remiss if I didn't point out that your ratchet scenario looks exactly like New England in 1775. Eventually the ratchet breaks all bonds, and then the rednecks pour out their NASCAR-themed bowls of wrath in the parking lot of Lexington Walmart. It will happen, for if there's one thing that Obama has in common with King George, it's industrial-grade, keep out of the reach of children, use only as directed, hubris.
Name a recent president who hasn't had that kind of hubris; it's practically a job requirement these days.
Lon Horiuchi is endorsing rifle stocks but these guys are going to go to war over health insurance? Color me skeptical.
Point taken on 1775, but it took a long time to come around.
On April 19th, by the end of the day that featured "the shot heard round the world", 14K minutemen were heading to the Boston area from as far away as CT. We'd be hard pressed to get that kind of response for much of anything today.
It's called the salami technique...take your goals one step at a time.
I only hope you are right and I'm wrong.
"Sweden with NASCAR and better gun laws".
Can we give them NASCAR?
"Gun ownership, gateway drug to a belief in political liberty."
pdb hit that one out of the park.
And remember, all our King had was a few thousand red uniformed automata. The war of 1775-83 was between Americans more than it was between the King and his subjects. The Army was just the non-insurgent Americans' enforcement arm. But it had to fight pretty much alone.
Because the loyalist Americans wouldn't go to war themselves to keep their current government- that's why and how the revolution succeeded. The redcoats almost won as it was, pretty much all by themselves. If the loyalists had been as willing to actually fight- militarily , organizationally, and financially- as the revolutionaries were, it would have been over in 1778 and we'd still be British North America.
Getting the video was all well and good. But what complaints against Officer Cheeks were filed? Why didn't the bozo with the camera ask for badge number, commander's name, and precinct or office that Officer Cheeks worked out of?
I think trespassing was a horrible grasp at something for the officer to blunder with. Disturbing the peace and interfering with a peace officer would have been much tougher to refute.
As an act of civil disobedience, leaving the sign turned down was horribly wimpy. As I said, it makes colorful video, but where is the conviction of the right to speak and display an opinion?
And when the officer claimed the "other sign" didn't have the picture - complain to the officer that the other sign is illegal, because it fails to meet accessibility standards - a text only sign doesn't have the visual cue for those with difficulty reading text at a distance.
I think the correct resolution to the officer's action would be to require Officer Cheeks and partner to parade that poster, with that picture, up and down main street in that community, for an hour about 11 am on any Monday - or maybe in the next (Labor Day?) parade.
I realize that "FEMA Camps" is a code phrase for a particular "round them up in boxcars" concern, but really, looking at the wake of Katrina, haven't we already had FEMA camps?
They ordered a "mandatory evacuation", wouldn't let people bring their firearms, and disarmed people before they let them into the camps. Admittedly, there was not any sort of effort to prevent people from leaving on their own, but the people who didn't have that option open were fairly well herded like animals.
Perhaps I'm being too pedantic about a fairly obscure point.
I take minor solace in the fact that I've personally stripped ratchets by overtightening bolts.
Staghounds - the king also had a boatload of Hessian mercs; which if you believe some of the crazy wookie-suits were the revolutionary war equivilent of Blackwater.
Because Obama is going to hire Blackwater to come take your guns away...just like George Bush was going to hire Blackwater to throw political dissendents in Gitmo.
I need a vacation.
You mean "Xe", right? ;)
I wonder if gun ownership might not be a gateway drug to a belief in political liberty in general
That was my experience, for what it's worth. I doubt it's unique.
To the broader question though.. Tam's got a good point. I'm increasingly thinking the only survivable route (shy of opening up a new frontier and moving that is) - is on the State level.
The difference between the Statehouse saying "no, our citizens won't take this anymore" and guys going all Henry Bowman is a critical difference of legitimacy. You may see all the same people out doing all the same horrible things to each other... but Robert Lee was a general, while John Brown was a criminal.
You mean "Xe", right? ;)
Actually, I meant "Brightfire".
They're now called "eX".
"...And half the population wants this; half your neighbors; half your relatives." Yeah, and 99% of your friends and neighbors want at least half of it.
Joe_M
Yup, pretty much everybody has their hobby horse; the one thing that they just have to tell people not to do/take their money to finance/compel people to perform.
I've come to the conclusion that the urge to just leave people the hell alone is a strange mutation with which I'm forced to suffer.
Ask a resident of Stockholm or London if they feel particularly serflike. They don't. They're happy.
No doubt they are happy. They don't know better and too many don't care to know better.
Regardless, I believe the present course runs us smack dab into the middle of Serf City.
Maybe I define the term too loosely. The end result still stinks.
WV: brane
As for living in one of those well-regulated nanny countries: I guess the wake-up for me was one particular incident in mine during the early 90's: a woman went to sleep off the results of a party in the sofa of a man she thought she knew well enough - they had worked together for several years. She thought he was safe. Well, during the night she woke up when he was trying to rape her. She panicked, grabbed the first thing her hand hit upon, which happened to be a knife in a fruit bowl - and stabbed him. As far as I can remember she supposedly did everything after that pretty much the right way by the law, called the police and ambulance and so forth. He died. She got four years in jail. Rapists, most often, get away with a few months here, if that.
Well, I started looking at things after that, and found out that by the laws and legal precedents in my country self-defense is, by any practical measurements, forbidden. You cant carry a gun, and if you happen to have one in your house and use it to intimidate an aggressor you will be found guilty in a court of law and will either end up paying a lot of money to the original aggressor or end up in jail. Somebody attacks you in the street and you manage to hit him hard enough to hurt him and ran away - same result. You see somebody attacked and help in any other way than by calling the police and maybe yelling to the aggressor that you just did that. Probably the same end result. And so forth.
No, I cant say I'm totally happy to live here. And talking about these things can be extremely frustrating, because mostly you just those same opinions - guns bad, we'd live in an Eden if they were completely banned, and you really are never justified in hurting anyone, no matter what they do to you, and all those laws which limit your rights, both in self-defense and in all the other way - of course we need them, because people are barbarians who would not be able to live right without them...
I don't get what FEMA has do with anything in the video, unless it's the fact that FEMA and this cop both have some connection to government encroachment in general. I guess I'm dumb, but who would look at this vid and think, "Yup-- FEMA". I am dumb, 'cause I don't get it -- Lyle
Well, there really are FEMA camps and they even have toxic gases in the showers, but the challenge for FEMA is getting the serfs to actually LEAVE the formaldehyde-laced "temporary" shelters they moved into four years ago. We can check out anytime we like, but you can't make us leave!
As far as the AR sales to new owners goes I have three friends who called me just after the election and asked what gun they should buy. All three have a minty new M4 style AR15.
Obama made new gun owners out of ho-hum people. Two of them had stated quite vocally that I was crazy for owning all the guns I do. Now they understand. I guess your ox must be gored before you understand.
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